Hearing Awareness Week!

Hearing Awareness Week occurs each year in the last full week of August. During Hearing Awareness week, we urge the Government to make noise-induced hearing loss a National Health Priority- with more than a third of acquired hearing loss due to excessive noise exposure which is entirely preventable.

Deafness or hearing impairment is often described as the ‘invisible disability’ with hearing loss being the second most prevalent health problem amongst the Australian population. One in six Australians is hearing impaired, Deaf or has an ear disorder – which of course is set to rise as the population ages. 73% of Australians over the age of 70 have a mild to severe hearing loss with as many as 85% of people in nursing homes typically being hearing impaired.

Hearing loss is often gradual, and may be caused by a number of factors but early detection is vital. People will often wait years before they seek any help and tend to ignore the signs – some of the early warning signs of hearing loss include; being able to hear but not understand or thinking that people are mumbling, frequently asking people to repeat themselves, finding it hard to hear in noisy situations or amongst groups of people, turning the TV up louder than others or not always hearing the phone and or doorbell.

Hearing aids do not fix your hearing problem.  Your nervous system needs time to adapt again to amplified sound and the noisy environments we live in, such as background noise at a café.  This can sometimes be a lengthy process requiring several visits to the clinic for adjustments and counselling – much like physiotherapy after an injury.  If you haven’t done anything about your hearing for a long time (on average we take 7-10 years to seek help for a hearing impairment), your brain will have forgotten how to process auditory information and needs time to relearn. Just as your vision prescription changes over time, so does your hearing, so your device requires frequent adjustments to match these changes.

Many people in the past were told that a hearing aid wouldn’t help, whereas now there are only a few hearing problems a hearing aid can’t fix. Hearing aids are so much more sophisticated than just an amplification device and with practice listening can become an enjoyable experience again. Technology today is designed to make conversations and other sounds louder, and reduce background and ambient noise. There have been leaps and bounds in hearing aid technology, with hearing aids able to connect to Bluetooth devices such as smart phones and tablets which enable you to control your device or track it when it is lost.

In Australia we are lucky to have one of the best Commonwealth funded hearing programs around the world for those whole are eligible. The Office of Hearing Services provides subsided services to people on a Pension (aged, disability, carers etc) and also to returned Veterans who hold a Gold or White for Hearing Specific card, through a voucher system which is a simple application process.

We need to eliminate the stigma, the isolation, the lack of real work opportunities and the associated health issues to improve the overall quality of life for people with a hearing impairment.